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Creating Accessible Veterinary Care and Accomplished Veterinarians (CAVS)

Principal Investigator: Lena DeTar

Department of Population Medicine and Diagnostic Sciences
Sponsor: Wiederhold Foundation
Title: Creating Accessible Veterinary Care and Accomplished Veterinarians (CAVS)
Project Amount: $35,000
Project Period: July 2024 to June 2025

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant):

This CAVS program provides key support for veterinary student and intern education at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, creating veterinarians who are confident and competent in providing general practice level medical and surgical services. It is challenging for veterinary students at Cornell University to access hands-on opportunities in surgery, especially general practice surgical procedures. Without mentored experiences, new graduates don’t feel confident providing these procedures to their clients, and refer to more expensive practices. This limits the veterinary-client-patient relationship and can prevent animals from receiving care, because it becomes too expensive. The MSMP Internship is a rigorous academic internship that strives to balance medical, population management, and surgical education. Repetition and access to more cases is crucial for these new DVMs, so they can feel confident going into shelter practice (often as the only veterinarian) at internship completion. In the previous grant cycle, 2/3 of the students and intern trainees reported that this was their first encounter with their particular case or complication.